I have found that starting to accelerate about half-way through the '2' count gives your kart or bike a boost at the start of Mario Kart Wii races.
Edit: the maximum boost may be achieved by starting to accelerate just after the '2' count zooms in from the front of the screen and stops moving.
I completed the first two cups of the 100 cc Grand Prix in Mario Kart Wii last night, although the second cup was only bronze. This unlocked the third cup for competition but I wasn't able to win that cup on my only attempt. I need more practice, that's for sure, and I may end up racing around the courses in practice mode so that I get a feel for them before I head out for more Grand Prix races, rather than going in cold to race in a pack of 11 other karts.
Having so many other racers can be a little unforgiving, particularly with quite a few courses that have places you can fall off the track. Being bumped unexpectedly from behind pushing you off the course is not much fun, and also causes quite a large delay that can drop you half-a-dozen places in the race. With a full field of karts collisions become a bit too random in the middle of the pack. There are also a slew of power-ups being fired off, although these don't seem as problematic.
Racing in Mario Kart Wii requires full use of the 'drift' power slide. There are plenty of corners that simply cannot be negotiated by steering alone and need the kart to be pushed in to a power slide. This is why getting know the courses would be a good idea before trying to race in a pack, and is also why random collisions can be frustrating as being bumped in a tight corner can throw you off your line completely and change the whole corner.
Being out in front is great. For a start, you're leading. But it gives you an empty course that you can tear around confidently, and the power-ups that target first place are only temporary frustrations. I suppose the real racer is the one who can get out of the pack and in to a comfortable lead. I'm hoping that this won't come down to a particular choice of character and vehicle, as I enjoy playing Toad a lot. I love the way he pulls wheelies too!
So my current aim is to become more familiar with the individual circuits, allowing me to concentrate on the race and not have to read the track too much. One course that I am currently whizzing around is Toad's Factory. Its long, sweeping corners and accelerated sections are proving to make the course one long and fast power slide to victory.
I popped in to London on Saturday to pick up a ticket for Blitzen Trapper, as well as a bunch of tickets for this year's Sci Fi London film festival, which thankfully looks far better than last year's disappointing schedule. I was able to get all the tickets that I was after, although I was a little concerned that one of the showings at the film festival may have sold out, being a rather popular choice. I would have ordered the tickets earlier but the e-mail mailing list had an odd choice of timings. One e-mail was sent informing me that 'the programme should be available and tickets on sale in two weeks' time!', but the next e-mail was three weeks later, reading 'tickets went on sale last week!' That doesn't strike me as the best system either to remind people to buy tickets or to prompt them to buy them early.
After I had bought all the tickets I found myself standing in the middle of Piccadilly Circus, watching the traffic go by on a sunny day, wondering what to do next. I live close enough to London, only a tube trip away, that I probably don't make the best of any visits in to the city, as I can come again almost whenever I want. Still, that realisation is also what prompts me to enjoy the sights and sounds whenever I make the trip, however short it is, so it's never really wasted. I was just enjoying being in Piccadilly Circus, looking at the graceful curves of the buildings up Regent Street one way and seeing if I could catch a glimpse of the large cinema displays in Leceister Square the other way, amidst the bustling tourists and traffic.
And then I saw a big display in a shop for Mario Kart Wii, which I remember from a conversation was released this week. I had been thinking about buying the game, and as I don't go shopping too often being this close to being able to carry it home with me was quite alluring. I had no idea how popular Mario Kart Wii was going to be and whether shops would be out of stock or not, and I also wasn't sure whether I'd enjoy it. I didn't much like the Gamecube's Mario Kart Double Dash, and I never got around to buying it. I don't remember why I didn't buy Double Dash when it first came out because I really enjoy driving games and the Mario Kart games have all been favourites of mine back from the days of the SNES version, and Mario Kart 64 was amazing.
I first played Double Dash on a friend's system, and I wasn't impressed. The handling of the karts was rubbish. When I started to steer I didn't get the impression that I was in control, it seemed that rather than the front wheels turning the back wheels were kicking out and initially moving the kart in a different direction than my input would impel. Feeling out of control of the vehicle was rather detrimental to my enjoyment of the game. That's not to say that Double Dash wasn't fun, as it remained a great multiplayer game, but as I have negligble opportunities to play console games multiplayer at home there was little reason to buy a game solely for its multiplayer option. As a single player game I knew that the poor handling of the karts would frustrate me, as steering a kart skilfully is fundamental to feeling like a racing driver.
I had no idea if the handling was better in Mario Kart Wii, or at least nowhere near as bad as in Double Dash, but I made my way across the busy roads and picked up the game box. As anyone knows, everything about a game can be gleaned by looking at a tiny screenshot on the back of a box, and so I was sold. In a fine display of spontaneity I decided to buy Mario Kart Wii and have not just something new to play but a new Mario Kart game to play. I was also intrigued by the included steering wheel in to which the Wii controller was inserted in order to play the game. Being directed to another floor in order to get a box with the game actually inside I doubled my spontaneous acts for the day and picked up a reasonably priced copy of Futurama's Bender's Big Score on DVD as well. Damn my impulsive purchasing!
On the way home on the tube I pondered again on whether I'll ever play Mario Galaxy to the full, having picked it up again briefly the other day and had a good time playing it. I suppose it depends in part on how much I'll play Mario Kart. Thinking about my previous post about gaming selections I came back to the idea about finishing games in relation to Mario Kart and racing games in general. With games like Mario Galaxy or Lego Star Wars there may be plenty of levels to negotiate and hidden content to explore or unlock but once you've finished it there is nothing more to be done and little to bring you back to the game. It is a great game indeed that inspires you to play through from the beginning again, a feat that Mario games have tended to achieve but still quite a feat. But racing games don't really suffer from that problem too much.
In Mario Kart there are still courses, characters and vehicles to be unlocked, and there is a definite progression through the game, starting from the 50 cc Grand Prix and working up through 100 cc to the 150 Grand Prix. If Mario Kart Wii follows the previous versions there will also be the mirror mode to be unlocked after getting gold cups in all the 150 cc Grand Prix, if not adding more content then at least adding more variety. But the great thing is that once all the content has been unlocked you haven't so much completed the game as opened it up finally to be enjoyed. With all the content available there are more reasons to continue playing, instead of a reason to find something different to play. The game is in winning races around circuits, and is only enhanced by having more courses, characters and vehicles to race. I have no qualms about sitting down and playing through as much as the content as I can as quickly as I can, because I know that I won't get to the end of a game that doesn't end.
So it was that I powered up my Wii and inserted the disc, getting my controller in to the steering wheel accessory. I started with the 50 cc Grand Prix, racing with Toad, my favourite character. I had decided to play with the wheel rather than traditional console controls so that I could see what it was like. I am also of the opinion that a game can best be enjoyed by getting as involved as possible in it. There is no sitting on a couch flicking my wrist to play golf or bowling, as I'd rather be either immersing myself or using traditional controllers. My first impressions were positive, with the kart handling as I'd expect it to given my inputs, so the failure of Double Dash for me was averted with Mario Kart Wii. The steering wheel was also quite easy to get the hang of. It requires a little bit of practice but I certainly think it's worth using. I still occasionally start a drift in the wrong direction, but I am fairly sure that's operator error that can be corrected given time. Considering that I ended up power-sliding around corners before boosting off a ramp and firing red shells at the same time I would say I am comfortable both with the handling of the karts and using the steering wheel.
There are 'over 30' courses in Mario Kart Wii, which sounds like quite a lot. As in a previous game, probably Mario Kart DS, there are two Grand Prix styles. The first uses entirely new courses, designed specifically for the new game. The second pulls in courses from other games in the series, from the SNES, N64, Gamecube, GBA, and DS, with some updated graphics and occasionally tweaked sections. With four cups per style and four courses per cup that gives sixteen courses per style and thirty two courses overall. With half of the courses coming from other games it doesn't quite seem to offer quite as much promised. The courses from the GBA and SNES are also remarkable in being flat, a restriction based on the hardware at the time, but offer a stark contrast to the flowing and often thrilling contours offered on the more modern courses.
Mario Kart Wii also offers on-line play, either against friends (my Mario Kart Wii friend code is available on request) or against random people from around the world. After playing a few games with a couple I knew who bought the game at the weekend I thought I'd see how many people were obsessively spending every waking moment in the on-line arena, boosting their ratings to astronomical levels. I played several rounds of on-line racing, and was able to boost my own rating a bit. There was one chap in the group I was joined to that was clearly ahead of everyone else and racing off in to the distance, but there was plenty of racing to be had in the middle of the pack. With many a power-up being released during the course of a race it can get quite hectic, and positions can change quickly and often. It all adds up to a great deal of fun, particularly as the control system and handling becomes transparent after a short while and you find yourself racing and not fighting the kart.
I completed the 50 cc class Grand Prix over the weekend, but turned the system off Sunday night after getting my arse handed to me in the first race of the 100 cc Grand Prix. I'll get back to that later and put in some more practice. The game looks to be a stunning and highly enjoyable addition to the Mario Kart series, and one that will surely see a great deal of play time from me.
It's funny, but someone repeatedly saying 'you've got to keep your sense of humour' has decidedly the opposite effect.
Here's the dilly yo. The renewal date for my domain was due recently. Normally that isn't a problem, as I pay someone some money and retain control of the domain for another year or two. However, as the first automated e-mail I received about this was from Nominet UK a week after the renewal date, and not from the registrar, UKFSN. Quite why the registrar wasn't able to send an automated message informing me that I owe them some money is a mystery, but not entirely unexpected as I'm sure this happened the last time the domain was due for renewal. As such, I wasn't terribly worried about losing the domain because after a simple e-mail to support the previous time I quickly had a new invoice to pay and I paid it.
I composed a short e-mail asking for a renewal invoice to be created for my domain and busied myself playing World of Warcraft. After a few days, not spent entirely in World of Warcraft, I hadn't received a reply to my e-mail, apart from the automated response, and I wondered what the trouble was. I wrote another e-mail asking for an update on the renewal request. The next e-mail I got about my domain was another from Nominet, reminding me that my domain was up for renewal and that if I didn't renew it within 30 days of the renewal date the domain would be taken from my control. I sent two more e-mails to 'support', making four over a period of a fortnight, and all remained unanswered. This got me quite frustrated, particularly as I was dealing with a time-sensitive matter that could mean losing a domain I had owned for six years.
It could, and arguably should, have been possible to update everything myself. The problem was the UKFSN had apparently shifted some of its services around a bit, making partnerships to deal with various services. This meant that UKPOST had shut off access, which was a problem because that is the arm used as registrar for my domain. Without access to my details there was nothing I could do apart from e-mail support and ask for assistance.
With a week to go until my domain was lost I decided that UKFSN just wasn't being supportive enough, and I started the process of transferring my domain name to a different registrar. I doubt that the company will miss my business, and I'm not making any sort of statement, I simply got frustrated. It's possible that it was no longer profitable to manage certain domains and wanted to phase them out of their control. But it's not like I would have freaked out if I had been told that, there are plenty of registrars available and I would have just used a different one. Not being told what's going on and having four e-mails ignored entirely is rude.
The problem with getting my domain transferred to another registrar is that the IPS tags needed to be updated, and without access to my details I couldn't do that myself, which meant e-mailing support. After the lack of attention my e-mails had received I had low hopes about achieving even this simple request, but luckily, and I do think it was luck, I actually got a response and the tags were updated. The timing wasn't great, as it was after half-past four on a Friday afternoon that the e-mail arrived informing me of the tags having been updated. I just hoped that my new registrar either had a working automated process or people working late on a Friday, because my domain wasn't going to survive past Sunday. Within an hour I got status updates letting me know that the domain was now both registered and renewed. Phew. That was a lot of drama for a simple operation, and I was far from happy with UKFSN's involvement.
And that's not all. At the same time my hosting period was due for renewal, and my hosting was with UKFSN. They have a good package with a reasonable rate, as far as I can tell, and until recently have been helpful and responsive when dealing with requests. I only realised that my hosting package was due for renewal because I noticed the dates when checking my account for an invoice for my domain. Again, I wasn't particularly perturbed by this turn of events because this had happened before and a single e-mail to support the previous time got my account renewed for another year, and I didn't have my account suspended or terminated for late payment at any point. It seemed to be nothing to worry about. But just as my e-mails about my domain renewal were being ignored so too were my e-mails, for I ended up sending two, about my hosting account.
If it had just been a matter of getting free hosting I might have felt a bit guilty but not worried too much about getting quick resolution. But some months back I asked for a couple of subdomains to be set-up, which I was told would be easy enough to do if I let them know what I wanted. I replied with the details and then heard nothing back. As the subdomains were just going to be a way to tidy up my site a bit and were far from urgent or necessary I didn't worry about it too much. After at least a month, but it seems like more, I finally received a confirmation e-mail that the subdomains had been set-up, long enough that I had lost the impetus to make use of them immediately. Again, as it wasn't terribly important I more-or-less ignored this glitch in support.
When I came to use this subdomain I found that I was having trouble connecting to it at times. I was getting DNS errors, and it seemed like a crap shoot whether I could connect to part of my own site or not. Again, I e-mailed support about it but, again, received absolutely nothing back, either to explain or resolve the issue. So with support apparently determining what was important with little regard to my considerations, an inexplicably shaky configuration, and a complete lack of automation on trivial account matters, I decided to take my account elsewhere.
I have to admit to not knowing about too many hosting companies, and I was quite happy with UKFSN for a long time and so didn't need to look, but there was one company I knew about that I thought was worth investigating. I headed over to Memset's website and took a look at the hosting packages that they offered. I wasn't sure if there would be anything suitable, as I understood them to offer serious configurations and I just wanted somewhere to plonk a personal site or two for not much money. However, looking at their simple web hosting option showed it to be quite reasonable and certainly as much, if not more, than I was currently getting. I was also confident that I could probably get some level of support when needed, what with being a friend of Memset's MD.
I created an account and got the move started. The reason I only sent a couple of e-mails to UKFSN to renew my hosting account was because once I had decided to move to another hosting provider I didn't really want to pay for another year's hosting with them, and I didn't want my account to be terminated before I had everything set up and running on the new servers either. Being a little paranoid, this was also why I haven't mentioned any of this directly until now. I had a few teething problems getting my domains hosted on the new servers, but nothing that I either couldn't work out for myself or Katie couldn't educate me about quickly. It turned out that I was missing a configuration step previously that once resolved got everything working properly.
I got my sites and all my content moved on to the new server over the weekend, all configured and running okay. I even set up the subdomain that this blog sits on and I no longer have to cross my fingers when trying to connect to it. It's taken a month of increasing stress and occasional mild panic, mostly because of the domain name itself, but my hosting needs remain met and are most likely improved.
I saw an advertisement for Blitzen Trapper playing live soon, so I am off to get myself a ticket. I picked up their second album some time back, although I can't remember how I found out it had been released. The advertisement for their gig states that the album is out on Sub Pop now, suggesting that it hasn't been available in the UK for too long, and I now that I bought the CD from Newbury Comics. I don't really care if that means I've had it longer than others or not, I mention it because of another reason. I Am Kloot also have a tour coming up and I have a ticket to see them too. I wondered if this tour coincided with an album release as well, as they tend to. Sure enough, I Am Kloot have a new album released soon. In fact, the album will be available the day before I am due to see them play, and this doesn't thrill me.
I can understand that familiarity can spoil the enjoyment of certain forms of entertainment. For books and films, where the narrative is important, there is much to be said for not knowing what is coming next. I know that the enjoyment can come from the journey and not the destination, and it is the enjoying the journey that allows me to watch films and read books several times without getting bored, but I can certainly appreciate why some people don't get the same level of enjoyment out of a narrative more than once. There are aspects of the story that don't instill the same emotional effect when you have prior knowledge of their coming. But, for me, music is different. Instead of familiarity dulling the sensation it heightens it. Knowing the passages that are coming up lets me appreciate more fully the current passage, it gives me a sense of expectation that I know won't be disappointed, because the music is the same every time.
This appreciation of the familiar is why I am not as excited as I could be about seeing I Am Kloot soon. With a new album out the day before I may not even have time to pick it up and listen to it before I go to the gig. Whilst I am quite likely to enjoy the album in time I won't appreciate the new songs soon enough to get a lot of enjoyment out of hearing them live. Indeed, hearing them live may be the first time I get to hear the new songs, and that has a slightly different effect on me in that I then recognise them on the album and tend towards favouring them early on. But this is why I am glad I picked up Blitzen Trapper's album early, and why I mentioned it, because it has given me many months to become familiar with and appreciate the music, so that when I go to see them play I can enjoy the live versions all the more.
I went to an off-site training seminar yesterday, on the basics of vibration shaker testing. It turned out to be a little too basic overall, but there were a few moments that were of interest, and I got to see the phallic student digs of Loughborough university again.
To get to Loughborough I drove about 100 miles up the M1, some 85 miles further up the M1 than I normally travel on my commute. It is heartwarming to discover that the only congestion on that 100 mile stretch of motorway is almost entirely contained within a 10 mile stretch I use every day. With any luck, the current road-widening that is partially creating the daily jams will, once complete, let me travel down the motorway using proper lanes instead of passing between cars in a way that resembles Luke Skywalker's passage down the Death Star trench. Only another 9 months of roadworks to go.
Even in a hire car I faced some potential danger on my journey though. In a contraflow section of the roadworks the front near-side tyre of the car in front of me started smoking quite badly. I dropped back even further behind him, just in case the tyre blew, and hoped that there wouldn't be an accident in the contraflow itself, but the smoking tyre looked pretty bad. Luckily, for me at least, the car made it out of the contraflow and the driver pulled over in to the coned-off section of motorway to stop, although he didn't do that immediately so I wondered what effect the tyre was having on his handling for the past two miles.
As for the seminar, I have a few notes. First, there was a lovely message on the side of a piece of test equipment used for demonstrations, asking 'please do not block airflow' as if it were a simple courtesy and not imperative for the electronics to continue working. I wouldn't like to deal with a person who thinks that the wording 'do not block airflow' is unnecessarily rude or curt.
I remembered why I don't much like going to presentations. It's because presenting information is difficult. There is the problem of reading the slides' content verbatim, thus negating the whole point of looking at the slides. I don't need to read along with someone to understand information. This is compounded by handing out copies of the slides to delegates, so that I have a copy of the slide in front of me, one being projected on to a screen, and the presenter reading out the words. I'm left with my attention drifting.
On top of that was the over-use of laser pointers. There were legitimate times when the pointers were useful, highlighting specific areas of diagrams, but I really don't think I need every word to repeatedly underlined whenever the presenter mentions it. I can follow the presentation just fine without the equivalent of a karaoke bouncing-ball moving over each word. Mind you, I have to admit that I found it a little amusing that one presenter kept on mistaking the laser pointer he was holding as a remote control for advancing his slides on the laptop.
It wasn't a terrible seminar, but the basic level of the subject matter, which I appear to have gained through experience, let my attention drift to the presentation of the material more than the content. It's good to know that I know what I am doing too.
It's at times like these that I would rather I were a bit more knowledgeable about various internet services. I'm currently unsure whether I have gone wrong in setting something up or if I just need to wait for DNS records to propagate.
Right now, the best thing I think I can do is wait. I currently have the luxury of time. If the situation doesn't resolve itself by a certain time I will have to take a different course of action.
Wondering what to do next with my Draenei warrior last night I ended up logging out without really accomplishing anything, feeling a little WoW-malaise again. This malaise is affecting me more these days, although I can shake it off and spend another evening gaining easy XP soon enough. I get bored these days partly because I've done all the content before, several times, but mostly because there's no one around to play with. With my friends going to different games, changing servers, or levelling solo, and my old raid group not needing me any more and a new group not appealing to me I was left with little to do on my old server with my two level 70s, and patch 2.4's new content was too far off to just hang around for a while.
Check more at thabet.fun/j77-vn-j77
At the end of last year I joined a US server, where a couple of internet friends play. I had to start anew, levelling up characters from the beginning, and we can only really play when the timezones allow, but at least I am grouping occasionally and it was people that I missed most about the game. I'm a-feared of strangers in general such that I tend not to hit the looking-for-group interface much and so I am still soloing most of the time, and that is why I get bored. Maybe I'll try to get in to more instances when I'm ready for the Outlands, but I don't want my character to get ahead of my friends and running an alt at the same time just means going through the same content yet again.
What this all means is that there are times when I'm looking for something else to do, scratching an itch that World of Warcraft can't always reach these days. I've been thinking about trying a new MMORPG for a while, toying mostly with EVE Online for its space setting. I also bought the Orange Box and got it running on my Mac, which gave me Portal to play and another on-line game to be alone in in the form of Team Fortress 2, as well as Half-life 2 and its episodes. But a discussion I was reading the other day brought up Underdogs and, with my having Crossover Games installed on my machine, I realised that I may be able to get Frontier: Elite 2 running for a bit of nostalgia. I could never find a copy for the Mac, and it's probably too old to run outside of emulation anyway, which is also probably true for the PC but it was a thought to try to find it. I really quite enjoyed Frontier when it first came out and I played it on my Amiga. Space combat certainly wasn't the same as in Elite, mostly because it was difficult and the learning curve was back-to-front. The game got much easier the further you got in to it, and not just because you got better. Starting out with a puny pulse laser meant timing your shots to hit an enemy craft seemed insanely hard, and once you got some trading done and bought a bigger ship a beam weapon meant you no longer had to time your shots.
Even so, I have fond memories of playing. Docking in Elite was fairly straightforward, in Frontier it was considered almost impossible without a docking computer because of the travelling involved from the outskirts of the system. One day I got jumped after exiting hyperspace and my docking computer was destroyed in the fight. I hadn't save the game for a few hours and didn't much fancy replaying all the missions, so I decided that I would try to make it to the station manually, something I had never even considered before. It wasn't easy, but using the time-dilating functions and being careful I managed to get in to orbit and dock. I was quite chuffed with myself! My chuffed self quickly bought a new docking computer and saved my game.
My main problem with Frontier was that despite supposedly having a whole galaxy to explore only a small subset of stars had any habitations on or around them. My game-explorer personality kicked in one day and I went off to see how far I could go out of the known systems and see what else I could find. With a fuel scoop to refill my tanks I headed off, out of known space. I kept on jumping in the same direction but with engines needing to be serviced roughly once a game-year I ended up floating adrift in space with a broken engine and no way to recover, and still there was no sign of further civilisations. I felt a bit maligned that we were given all these stars but were forced in to travelling between a small percentage of them all, but it wasn't that big a deal overall.
So, anyway, yes, I was thinking that I could try to find a copy of Frontier and see if I could get that working under Crossover Games, to give myself another option for entertainment. And that brought me back to wondering why I don't just try EVE Online. It's set in space, it is more modern, and it is supported on the Mac. Apart from having to pay for it, which is fairly common these days I hear, there didn't seem to be a good reason not to try that instead. But if I'm going to pay for a game maybe I should get something that won't demand a lot of my time, or at least be a niggling thought that I should be spending more time playing it, what with the monthly fee. I found that there is a House of the Dead game available for the Wii, and Mario Kart Wii is out this week too. Those are both possibilities, if it weren't for the fact that I still have Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles still to finish, and Mario Galaxy. And Star Wars Lego. They are all good games and I don't know why I haven't played them more.
Perhaps I am just after The New right now, something unfamiliar to catch my attention, at least for a while. I have a feeling that if I fire up Half-life 2 or Mario Galaxy I'll be able to have fun for as long as I want, I just need to get over that initial feeling that stops me from doing so. I think that feeling is that I don't want the fun to end. When I was playing Portal I was trying not to rush through the game, to pace myself, as I had heard it was short. I still got through it quite quickly, though. I know that I'll get to the end of Half-life 2 and Mario Galaxy at some point too, and probably more quickly if I actually play them from time to time, and maybe that's the real problem I need to overcome. I have been playing WoW for three years, and it was a game that never ended. I think I needed that a little bit, as games were not forthcoming for the Mac and the Gamecube wasn't delivering too much at the end. I think my WoW-malaise was brought on from playing two characters to level 70, getting netherdrake mounts, and, with no other paths available, realising that I had, for me, finished the game. But now I have more options, because of Crossover Games and because the Wii is still new enough that big games are being released with a frequency that will keep me entertained. I just need to get over the fact that I'll finish the games at some point.
With any luck I'll be posting about Mario Galaxy soon, and maybe, just maybe, about how cool it was to finish it.
I'm currently re-watching the first series of The Wire. I borrowed the DVD set from a friend after finding out it was written by David Simon, who wrote the book Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, which I read recently after being reminded of it, and on which the excellent TV series Homicide: Life on the Street was based. I was so impressed by the first series that I picked up the second and third series, before buying the first for myself. The nature of the show is something I haven't seen before, the whole series being a single story. There have been programmes with series-long story arcs but even they have generally had an episodic feel, where single episodes had a self-contained element that allowed them to be viewed individually. Each episode of The Wire is akin to a chapter of a book: the story is moved along and the chapter can be enjoyed, but it makes little sense outside of the whole. Another interesting feature, which I didn't realise until an audio commentary pointed it out, is that there is no incidental music at all. Any music included is from the environment itself. This seems to draw me in to the world quite effectively.
Upon watching the first series for a second time I have become a little amused with some of McNulty's lines. It seems he has a fair bit of dialogue where he simply repeats as a question one or two of the words uttered by another character. 'Another character?' Yeah, offering up a method of exposition by almost sharing the same rich dialogue of Neo, in The Matrix. Noticing when it happens kind of pulls me out of the immersion, though.